With the increasing usage of Internet in wireless networks, IP breakout (or IP offload) solutions are becoming very useful mechanism to alleviate bandwidth overload problems in backhaul and core network links in cellular networks. An IP breakout solution provides a redirection point within radio access network and/or core network so that Internet traffic (a.k.a. packet-switched data) to and from user equipments can be offloaded directly to the public network, bypassing radio access and core network links of cellular network providers. In 3rd generation wireless networks (3G Wireless in short), like UMTS (Universal Mobile Terrestrial System), however, both of the circuit-switched data (e.g., voice call, video call data) and the packet-switched data are carried over by the same network resources (NodeB, RNC, UE, and the interfaces between them) inside RAN (Radio Access Network), where circuit-switched traffic should not be offloaded directly to the public network—instead circuit-switched data should be carried on their normal paths toward the core network that handles such traffic.
Segregating the circuit-switched traffic efficiently is important because circuit-switched traffic typically has stringent requirements on their latency. Thus it should not take excessive amount of time and processing to make the decision as to whether given data packet is part of circuit-switched traffic or packet-switched traffic.
Therefore, techniques for efficiently segregating circuit-switched traffic from packet-switched traffic within a RAN would be desirable.